What should I see this weekend?, 12/16-12/18

This week, Rogue One shoots for the stars! Fences aims for the fences! Collateral Beauty... is bad.

(SR)=Specialty Release

The Good

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: “Though pacing and character issues keep this Star Warsspinoff from reaching its full potential, director Gareth Edwards still turns in a more-than-worthy addition to the galaxy far far away.”

Fences: “Denzel Washington is sensational as an angry father grappling with his family and his past in this beautifully realized adaptation of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.”

The Hollow Point(SR): “An over-the-top, heavily stylized B-movie-ish mash-up of modern western and bloody thriller, The Hollow Point sees U.S.-based Spanish director Gonzalo LópezGallego (The King of the Hill) seeking to bring a new angle to the bad-men-in-the-badlands genre.”

Short Stay(SR): “Simple yet effective in its naturalistic portrait of a man who can’t really fit in anywhere (nor does he seem to want to), this understated slice of East Coast life will mostly please fans of Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg and other low-fi DIY directors when they first started out.”

The Blah

Collateral Beauty: “A top-notch cast shines through the murk of an ill-conceived movie about loss and grief and finding a way to move on.”

A Kind of Murder(SR): “A period mystery with little of the psychological tension associated with Patricia Highsmith's stories.”

Ghostland(SR): “Simon Stadler has made an intermittently entertaining movie about the ‘Bushmen’ of Namibia, but Ghostland feels hollow, even manipulative. Something is troubling beyond the film's portrait of a people who have abandoned their ancient traditions and are experiencing the challenges of the modern world.”